HEART DON’T FAIL ME/ HOLLY KNIGHT

I met Daryll Hall through Tommy Mottola, Hall and Oates‘ manager (and at one point my manager ). In fact when Daryll and I first met, we joked about the fact that when I was eighteen I almost auditioned for his band, and then chickened out because I felt I was too young to go on tour. But that’s how I first heard about Hall and Oates.

We wrote a song called Soul Love for the ‘OOh Yeah‘ record. I wish we had had more time to write together because I loved his voice, and I knew we could’ve written something even better than Soul Love. Ironically, Daryll wanted me to give ‘Heart Don’t Fail Me Now‘ to him for the next Hall and Oates record, but I decided to keep it for mine. I should’ve given it to him because Daryll would’ve done the song more justice than I ever did. I don’t even consider myself a singer, so it’s not even a level playing field. Ah well, would’ve, could’ve should’ve and if pigs could fly :-)

When I shot the video, I went back to New York to film in my hometown. We shot it in black and white in places like Coney Island, on the Brooklyn Bridge, an old abandoned church in Manhattan. The director, Ken Nahoum asked me what what kind of car I wanted to drive in the video, so I jokingly said, “a silver Jaguar XKE convertable”, and they got me one !

I needed a ‘love interest’ in the video so I had to audition a bunch of struggling actors with the director. There was one guy that stood out to me, and I ended up hiring him for the video. His name was James McCaffrey and since then he has become a successful actor, playing in quite alot of things, including one of my favorites TV shows, Rescue Me. I was so happy to see that he made it’. –HK